Any tips on finding an affordable camera making slime time lapses?

[Zander Chierici]

I work at a highschool lab (as a passionate student) and am designing slime mould experiments for next year's biology class. I have been trying to find a good camera for capturing slimes in low or or infrared light, but since it's a high school class the budget is about $2000 for 5 cameras. But would prefer to stay on the cheap side if possible.

Does anybody have any camera recommendations or infrared set ups? 

I was thinking of taking out the infrared filter in my gopro and adding an infrared light pointing at the slime so I could record it when it's actually active.

I'm working with Physarum polycephalum if that helps.

[ian]

Hi

I use Canon eos-m's - fairly cheap second hand and they run magic lantern so you can time lapse with long exposure. If you're thinking of Ir just to keep slimes happy, Amber leds are a lot easier - physarum can't see light that's the same colour as it

[Zander Chierici]

I'm not too familiar with canon cameras, do you have to have a lense to get good photos of the slime? If so, what size lense do you use?

[ian]

I'm using the standard kit lenses - 18-55mm, about 40cm above the tray you can get a 30x30cm field of view, I run assays either on a whole plate of agar or on 5x5cm agar squares with a paper top ( eliminates problems with shrinkage ). I used to use Nikon d50's but they need an external intervalometer. Fixed focus webcams are ok but with an SLR you have a much higher pixel count so can crop in on the time lapse. 

I generally use low level white light illumination - around 2s exposure at f8 to do my slime filming